


Last Christmas

by strangethewriter



Series: 'Tis the Season [1]
Category: Shatter Me Series - Tahereh Mafi
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Don't take it too seriously, Modern AU, One Shot, Warnette, do they kiss under the mistletoe? maybe!, there's other side characters, this is just for my fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21941065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangethewriter/pseuds/strangethewriter
Summary: Office Holiday Party AU!"His eyes light up with laughter at the memory of what I consider to be the most embarrassing moment of my entire life. This time, I kick him on the shin. He chokes back a laugh trying to fake a serious expression. “I’m sure he forgot already,” he says."After Juliette embarrassed herself in front of her coworker (and crush) Aaron Warner during the last Holiday party, she is hesitant about going to the next one, but maybe she'll go with the right motivation.
Relationships: Juliette Ferrars/Aaron Warner
Series: 'Tis the Season [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2066715
Comments: 4
Kudos: 43





	Last Christmas

“What are you wearing to the Holiday party?” 

I look up from my screen to see Kenji, who has rolled his chair from his cubicle to mine.

“Aren’t you supposed to be working?” I ask.

He smiles, putting the pen he was holding behind his ear. “I’m taking my lunch break,” he deadpans.

“It’s 10 in the morning.”

“Come on, J, don’t be like that, I just asked you a question.”

I push back out of my desk and spin my chair in his direction crossing my legs. I sigh. “I don’t know if I’m going,” I say. 

Kenji kicks me in the shin. 

_“Ow, Kenji what the hell?”_

“Why aren’t you coming?” He asks, patting away the dirt he left where he kicked me. “Sorry I kicked you, by the way, I meant to lightly push your leg with my foot.”

I scoff. “Yeah well, gross underestimation of your strength, Kenji. Perhaps I should call HR.”

“I said I’m sorry!”

“Yeah well, sorry doesn’t sweeten my tea.” 

He tilts his head narrowing his eyes. “Stop being dramatic. Now, seriously, why aren’t you going?” 

“I didn’t say I’m _not_ going, I said I wasn’t sure—”

“I swear to god, I’ll kick you again,” he interrupts me.

I look around the office making sure that no one can overhear. No one seems to be paying attention to us, but just to be sure I lean towards Kenji. “Are you kidding, Kenji? After what happened last year?” I whisper. 

His eyes light up with laughter at the memory of what I consider to be the most embarrassing moment of my entire life. This time, _I_ kick him on the shin. He chokes back a laugh trying to fake a serious expression. “I’m sure he forgot already,” he says. 

I spin back to my desk, hitting the space bar on my keyboard to start my computer, that had gone to sleep, again. The budget spreadsheet I’d been working on blinks at me again. I begin to type as I say: “Well, I didn’t forget, so.”

“It wasn’t _that_ bad,” Kenji says. 

I feel my face starting to burn in shame again. I put my hands in my face to conceal the redness. “ _Kenji_ —”

“Wait,” he says, laughing again as he takes his phone out of his pocket. “I think I still have the picture in here somewhere. 

I drop my face into my desk. _“Please tell me you’re joking.”_

“No, here it is!” he says turning his phone screen towards me. And I see it. That goddamn picture.

The party had been going great. Instead of standing around in the office break room that night, we decide to pitch in and rent an AirbnB for the party. It was a nice house, with a huge living room with a stone chimney and a fancy stainless steel kitchen and a pool that we were too cold to use anyway. We were sharing food and drinks and having some well-deserved fun after our last fundraiser. 

And Aaron was there, obviously. 

We’d been talking on and off throughout the night, looking at each other from across the room and smiling.

That was until I ruined it by being a headass. 

I got up from the couch at one point in the night to go get more wine from the kitchen. When I came back I tripped on the carpet, falling directly between Aaron’s—who was innocently sitting on the armchair—legs. And not only that, but I spilled my entire drink on his pants and shirt. He looked down at me with an expression that to this day can’t decipher. I, kneeling between his legs with my hands in his lap, panicked. I tried to stand up, patting his pants dry with the sleeve of my sweater. The heel of my boot had gotten caught with the tassels of the rug, so my leg wouldn’t budge while I tried to stand. 

Aaron removed himself from me and leaned down, untangling the threads from my shoe and helping me up. 

After a mumbled _Oh God, I’m so sorry_ I ran into the bathroom and hid there for 20 minutes until Kenji dragged me outside again. 

When I made my less than triumphal return to the party he was gone. 

I could barely look at him the following week, less of all _speak._ So I didn’t. Not for a few days until he came up to me and assured me that it was all fine. That the stain had come off his clothes no problem. I knew he was just trying to make me feel better, but the wine stain wasn’t exactly what I was worried about. 

I look at the godforsaken picture yelling _Idiot!! You are an idiot!!!!_ at me from Kenji’s phone.

The subject of the picture is not really me, but Brendan and his boyfriend Winston who he brought to the party. He is kissing his cheek as Winston looks shyly away from the camera. 

In the background, there’s me on the floor, a pair of Holiday antlers halfway down my face as I grab onto Aaron’s lap, who is looking down at me mortified. 

I had forgotten about the antlers.

“I thought I ask you to delete that,” I say.

“No way” Kenji responds. “This is gold.”

I sigh, dropping my head in my desk again, crossing my arms over it trying to block the outside world. 

“Juliette, you see him every day. I don’t understand what the difference is.”

I shake my head. To be completely honest I don’t either. But there’s something about it that puts a knot in my stomach and makes me want to throw up. “It’s the—the setting, I don’t know. Brings back all the memories. You guys even booked the same damn house.”

“You’re being ridiculous and you know it.”

“I _do_ know, Kenji, thank you.”

He looks down at his phone again, pinching out on the picture to zoom in on Aaron and I. “If you were to ask me,” he says. “I would even say he liked it—”

“Good morning, Juliette,” says Aaron’s voice from behind me, making me slap Kenji’s phone out of his hand. 

I spin around in an instant and stand up. I take his appearance in. He’s standing in front of me in his freshly pressed suit and perfect hair. Perfect everything, like always. 

“Hey,” I say. “How are you?”

Before he responds, Kenji crawls out from under my desk where his phone flew into. “It went all the way back, almost couldn’t reach it,” he says. 

“Is everything okay?” Aaron asks. 

“Uhh yeah. Kenji just dropped his phone,” I say. 

“Yeah,” Kenji says irritated. “That’s _exactly_ what happened.” 

I flip him off behind my back so only he can see. 

“What brings you to this side of the office?” Kenji asks.

“Just came to say hello,” Aaron responds.

“Huh,” Kenji says, feigning confusion. “How come you never come to _my_ desk to say ‘hi’?”

I can feel my face heating up again. “You don’t have to answer that,” I say.

“Alright then, I’ll leave now. I have work to do,” Aaron says, nodding his head in goodbye as he walks away. 

Kenji stands up from the floor and rushes to the side of my cubicle. “Hey, Warner!” he yells down the hallway making Aaron turn around towards us again. “Are you coming to the Holiday party this weekend? It’s going to be _lots_ of fun.”

Aaron furrows his eyebrows. “Oh, I don’t know,” he says, turning to look at me in the eye. “Are you coming?”

“Yeah,” I say, faster than intended. “Yeah, I’m coming.”

I don’t exactly know what led me to that decision. I think I just want to see if he’ll say yes after I say I’m coming. Or if he says no.

“Well,” he says. “I guess I’ll see you there, then.”

And with that, he turns around again and disappears around the corner. 

I collapse back into my chair. My computer has gone dark once more, but I can’t bring myself to bring it out of its sleep. Kenji is looking at me with crossed arms and accusatory eyes.

“My god, J,” he says. “Just ask him out already.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, opening my drawer and taking out a pack of post-it notes and write _Buy_ snacks and drinks for office party and sticking it on my wall. 

“You’re full of shit, you know that?”

I sigh crossing my legs under me. “Kenji, I don’t know if he likes me like that.”

“Are you serious?” He laughs. “‘ _Just came to say hello? Are_ you _coming?_ ’”

“That doesn’t mean anything, he’s just being friendly.”

“He even lets you call him ‘Aaron’ for Christ’s sake.”

“Oh yeah,” I huff. “I hear the wedding bells already. What do you say, should we have like a spring wedding or a destination one over the summer?”

He sits back down on his chair spinning me around to face him and putting his hands on my arms rests, trapping me. “Joke all you want,” he says. “But I’ve worked here longer than you, and I have known him longer than you have, and I rarely see that guy smile. He didn’t even come to office parties! But when he’s around you he’s all friendly chatter and nice beautiful dimples,” he says, waving his hand around his face. 

“You think he has beautiful dimples?”

“Don’t change the subject,” he scolds. “He likes you, okay? And one of you needs to do something about it before the office explodes with the force of your sexual tension.”

I open my mouth to protest, but before I can he wheels away back to his desk. 

***

I step inside the house and look around it for a moment. The party looks too much like last year’s to my liking. Alia even tried to put those deer antlers back on my head as soon she opened the door for me before I refused. She still made me put on a Santa hat, but that is probably still better than the alternative. 

The house is warm from the fire on the chimney and from the heat of the oven, where I suspect someone is baking cookies from the smell of gingerbread that fills the room. I peel my coat off and throw it with the rest of them. Kenji, who is talking to Lily and Ian, waves at me to come over from the far corner of the living room. 

“Hey, Princess,” he says, putting his arm around my shoulders when I get to them. “How are you? Just got here?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Just got here.” 

“Let me bring you a drink then, wine? Red?” he asks, making his way towards the kitchen.

“Sure, thanks,” I call after him. I turn to Ian and Lily and ask: “How you guys doing?” 

“Great,” says Lily. “We were just talking about _Game of Thrones_ before. You watch that show?”

“Oh, no,” I say shaking my head.

“Good,” says Ian. “Save yourself, the final season was total bullshit.”

I chuckle at that. He used to never shut up about the show, but refused to speak of it for days after the final episode aired. “Yeah, I heard.”

Kenji comes back, handing me a cup filled to the brim with wine. 

“What are you trying to get me drunk for?” I ask jokingly. 

“Liquid courage,” he says. “Aaron should be here any minute and you need to loosen up if you’re going to make a move on him.”

Ian and Lily laugh at that. 

“Oh, no you guys too,” I say.

“It’s going to happen sooner or later, Juliette, we all know. We even made bets!”

Kenji tries to shush her, but Ian continues: “I said you guys would bang before the end of the year.”

 _Oh my god._ “You’re joking.”

Kenji just shakes his head.

I gulp down half my wine in one go. “Nice talk guys. I need to go get some water now.”

I open the door to the kitchen and walk inside. Winston, Brendan’s boyfriend, is squatting in front of the oven his forehead pressed to the glass. He turns around to the sound. “Oh, hey Juliette, how are you?” he says still squatting down. 

“Hey, Winston, nice to see you again. Is Brendan here? I didn’t see him.”

“Oh yeah,” he says. “I think he went to go get more ice from the store.”

I nod an _Okay._ “So...” I say. “What are you doing?”

“Oh uhh,” he mumbles standing up, “I was just making sure the cookies didn’t burn.”

“You made those from scratch?” I ask.

“Yeah, my mum’s recipe. They’re the best,” he smiles. 

His phone rings in his pocket. “Excuse me,” he says walking past back to the living room. “Gotta take this.”

I sigh when the door closes behind him. I dump the rest of my wine on the sink, rinse my cup and fill it with water. A timer goes off on the oven and I lean down to look through the glass. The little gingerbread men look ready to be pulled out. I hear the door swing open behind me and say: “I think your cookies are ready,” turning around expecting to see Winston and finding Aaron instead. 

“Oh,” I say, my voice a higher pitch than usual. I clear my throat. “Thought you were Winston.”

He smiles a little. “He’s baking?”

“Yeah. His mum’s recipe,” I say trying to imitate his voice. I shake my head realizing I must’ve sound stupid. 

“Right,” he says looking at the ground. 

And suddenly it’s too much. Just looking at him makes my chest constrict and I’ve been too much of a coward to do anything about it. For _months,_ more than a year now, I’ve been looking at him from a distance when all I want is to get closer. Sitting across the room from him, late at night when we both work late, hoping one of us will close the distance between us but my legs refusing to move under the fear of ruining the friendship we’ve been working on since we met. 

Maybe Kenji is right, maybe he likes me back. 

Or maybe I’m just projecting onto him. Seeing things that are not there. Reading to much into his actions. Maybe all the times our hands grazed the other’s in meeting rooms and under the break room table have been nothing more than an accident. 

But then he asks: “Want to go outside?” and I’m stupid and hopeful enough to think that it means more than it might.

“Sure,” I nod.

***

We stand on the small balcony connected to the kitchen. it overlooks the backyard that is faintly lit with white Christmas lights wrapped around the trees. A rush of cold air passes through us making me shiver. I wrap my arms tightly around me trying to shield myself from the cold. I exhale, my breath turning to a cloud of steam that floats off into the night. 

A heavy coat falls over my shoulders. I turn around to see Aaron, who is leaning back down against the railing of the balcony. 

“Thank you,” I say. “Won’t you be cold?”

He shakes his head. “I’m fine. ”

“Okay.”

We both go quiet for a moment. I look up at the sky, it’s a clear night. The house, being away from the city, has a great view of the stars.

“It’s beautiful out here,” I whisper.

He nods, looking up into the sky and then back at me. “Yeah, it is.”

A wave of warmth goes through my body. I divert my eyes from his and look back up. A little mistletoe is on a pot hanging from the roof. And I don’t know what possessed me, but I lean down towards Aaron and press a small kiss to his cheek.

He gasps. 

Suddenly my common sense return. “ _Sorry!_ ” I say, the words tumbling out of my mouth. “There was—there’s a mistletoe hanging there and I just thought...I’m sorry I didn’t mean to--”

Aaron looks up to where I’m pointing, furrowing his eyebrows. 

“I don’t think that’s mistletoe,” he says.

I look back up to see that it is, in fact, not mistletoe, but probably marjoram or some other random plant. _Oh, fucking Christ. This is_ worse _than last year._

“Well in my defense it’s pretty dark out here—”

I’m cut off by his lips crushing into mine, stumbling backward from the force of it making Aaron pull away from me. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I thought—”

I grab his face between my hands and pull him back to me. Our kiss is hesitant first. But then I open my mouth against his and he wraps his arms around my waist, pushing me back until my body is pressed against the railing. I dig my hands into his hair, fisting it lightly between my fingers like I’ve wanted to do for the last year of my life. 

“Juliette, love,” he says against my mouth. “I think I—”

The kitchen door flies open, making Aaron and I spring apart. 

Winston runs into the kitchen, putting on a pair of oven mitts frantically. He opens the oven door, a cloud of smoke coming out of it and filling the room. He pulls out the baking sheet out of the oven and drops it on the counter. An army of burnt gingerbread men jumping off of it. 

“Shit,” he says. 

Aaron sneaks his arm back around me and leans down to whisper in my ear. “Want to get out of here?” he asks.

I smile up at him. “Yeah,” I say. “We should go find some real mistletoe.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Holidays!


End file.
